Delhi is now the national hotspot of Covid-19 with 70,390 cases

In terms of the number of Covid-19 cases, Mumbai overtook Wuhan on June 9. Wuhan was the epicentre of coronavirus pandemic in China. Two weeks later, Delhi has overtaken Mumbai to become the worst-affected city for Covid-19 caseload in India.

On Thursday morning, Delhi’s Covid-19 case count was at 70,390. Mumbai had 69,528 cases. But as happens with numbers, they don’t tell you the full story. Delhi did not become India’s new coronavirus hotspot just like that.

Delhi’s inflection point was May 29. Barring one day, Delhi has consistently reported over 1,000 cases every day since then. Delhi has seen more than three-fold rise in Covid-19 cases in June itself taking May 31 as the baseline.

Till the second week of June, Mumbai was still a bigger worry than Delhi. However, as this India Today report showed that Delhi was witnessing much faster spread of Covid-19 even in the first week of June. Delhi’s was about 5.25 per cent while Mumbai showed signs of relent at less than 3 per cent.

Back then, it was expected that Delhi would overtake Mumbai in the beginning of July. But this happened at least a week ahead of the projected date. With 3,947 fresh cases recorded on June 23, Delhi reported the highest Covid-19 cases for any city in the world.

Now, this was the scarier picture. But there are silver linings too.

Delhi has a bigger population than Mumbai – 1.68 crore to 1.25 crore. Delhi has tested more people than Mumbai for Covid-19 – 4.2 lakh tests to 2.94 lakh.

Covid-19 testing ratio shows, Delhi testing 22,142 people for every 10 lakh population. Mumbai’s figure stands at 22,668. But again, Mumbai has a higher – over 23 per cent – positivity rate than Delhi’s – less than 17 per cent. However, over the last few days, the daily positivity rate in Delhi has climbed to match Mumbai’s.

Proportionate to its population, Delhi still has the fewest cases among global hotspots at 347 cases per 10 lakh population. Mumbai has 5,478 cases per 10 lakh population.

Delhi has recorded fewer deaths than Mumbai, and more recoveries. Mumbai has 28,548 active cases and 37,008 recovered patients with 3,964 losing their battle against Covid-19.

In Delhi, 26,588 (almost 2,000 less than Mumbai) active Covid-19 cases with 41,437 recoveries and 2,365 deaths have been recorded.

Mumbai’s daily growth rate started falling in June. Last week, Mumbai’s daily Covid-19 growth rate fell from 2.7 per cent to 2.4 per cent, much lower than the national daily growth rate of 3.3 per cent. While Mumbai improved its Covid-19 doubling rate through June to almost 29 days. Delhi’s doubling rate reduced to 12.

Now to contain the raging coronavirus in the city, the Delhi government is planning to conduct a house-to-house screening in covering 45 lakh households. This is to be done in two phases. The screening is to be completed in the containment zones by June 30 and the rest of the city by July 6.